please read below for details, and contact numbers…
Monthly Archive for September, 2007
Street Photography & Personal Space
Street Photography involves getting close to people — often very close. To do this type of shooting successfully you have to be in the scene, part of it, not a distant observer. This means shooting with wide lenses; certainly nothing longer than 50mm. With a wide-angle lens you are a participant. With a telephoto you are at best just an observer, at worst a voyeur.
Shooting this way means moving closer into most people’s personal space than they are normally used to. For this reason places like crowded streets in big cities, midways, carnivals, parades and the like are preferred venues.
As crowding increases, people’s personal space requirement decreases. Also, the space one needs and expects is culturally dependant. In some countries people naturally stand, talk and touch each other in public to a closer degree than in others. But there are general unspoken rules. Get too close, “In your face” — as the saying goes, and people get nervous, even if they don’t know exactly why.
At a fair, a midway at a carnival, a sports event, parade, concert or public ceremony, people’s need for personal space and therefore privacy is reduced. The level of sensory stimulation is also usually high at these events, which tends to reduce the need for space. As well, in most of these situations people are having fun so they are more relaxed.
At the far extreme is a crowded elevator. We stand touching shoulders with strangers in a small space, yet taking a photograph would be an unthinkable invasion, even if it were not physically impossible to do.
Understanding these issues is important to doing effective and interesting street photography. If you poke a camera in someone’s face as they sit alone reading a book on an empty park bench you’re likely to be poked back. But you can comfortably get even closer if you’re both standing in a crowd watching children riding a Ferris wheel.
A Story in a Single Frame
Like the proverbial million monkeys at their typewriters, eventually random shooting will produce, if not a Shakespearian sonnet then possibly a half-way interesting photograph. But, what will it say?
For a street photograph to be successful I think that something in the scene has to speak meaningful to the photographer, even if what that something is isn’t immediately apparent. Effective street photography is about telling a story in a single frame, not simply recording what was there at a particular time and in a specific place.
Anon –2001
Street Photography
Mandy Schreiber- cape town-writer-photographer-creative
Photography is one of those strange genres of…er…what? It’s not entirely art because the photographed moment does or did actually exist – it is not created from nothing. It is not entirely social commentary because as with words, images can be manipulated by angles and interpretation. It is not entirely technology because although technology plays an increasingly larger role in a photographer’s life, the basic concept of a pin-hole camera remains no matter how much fancy equipment one might have.
Photography is oblique. It’s a shape shifting skill, art form and means of social commentary like no other. It escapes words and portrays emotion so deeply that you can almost smell its universal reflections.
I have always thought that a country’s beauty can be determined by its ability to be displayed in pictures. And yes the grand old London can sometimes deliver interesting photographs and the Eiffel Tower and Statue of Liberty offer iconic pictures. But real beauty – not the mundane, consumer version of beauty –is far more prevalent in the less developed countries. With a resigned acceptance of life’s imperfection, it’s in these countries and places that we find the kind of beauty that speaks to our spirits and offers a sense of ancient futures. This type of beauty is often missing from first world countries and smiles where even photographs and billboards depict the capitalistic and spiritual drain on society.
In contrast, a country like South Africa is beautiful and made more beautiful by real suffering, by struggling, by fighting for justice, by fusion, by acceptance, by challenges, and most of all by diversity. The colourful places, landscapes, people, cultures and religions that form the melting pot of our collective culture are a photographers dream. The photographer reminds us of beauty. And while our country so desperately and foolhardily struggles towards first world status, we need reminding. This is because we forget about the aspects of life that pay no attention to dollar signs but which offer the wordless truth that is significant to us all. Photographers remind us of the beautiful and painful truth of real life.
The 2008 MOPP Home Sweet Street, the theme to celebrate the real beauty of the people. The streets of South Africa are where its beauty lives, thrives and speaks to higher powers. Some of these streets are paved with gold, some dusty and forlorn; some famous and some mysterious and unknown. But it is these streets that connect us all in the same way that the rivers connect to the sea. Our streets tell our story, they offer thousands of tales and the faces on the streets offer endless narratives of life experience.
The only thing we can really be certain of in this life is change. Sometimes change happens overnight and sometimes it stretches and twists in reluctant defiance but it is inevitable. In celebrating change, diversity and acceptance by observing beauty on street level, we choose to ignore the inflated egos and hype of the political and economic power game. This beauty seen through the eye of the camera lens is what drives every true photographer and is ultimately their message. We see the man in the street as he is, just like us, with stories in his eyes.
General meeting - getting together for MOPP 2008
* Everyone interested in the next Month of Peoples’ Photography exhibition is invited!
* Sunday 23 september 2007
* 14:00
* @ the studio (28 commercial street, cape town)
The agenda:
- chat about what’s going on with MOPP and the Camissa Collective,
- discuss the next step, which is MOPP 2008,
- and basically getting everyone together in one place to hook up again.
stiek uit!
Francois
082 940 9191
“Never doubt that a small group of committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’sthe only thing that ever has.”
Margaret Mead
”Street ”has resonance with many a global,societal changes and challenges.
The new theme like the other before , has no one definition,program or manifestation.MOPP is social construction and has been up for deconstruction every year with the interaction of the new and old practioners of the medium.Photography is both an art medium
and a mass medium and its a number of other and MOPP to …
Home Sweet Street the new theme is an, investigation on the various interpretations of street photography’.the functions can be historical documents, political propaganda,pornography,files for personal memories as works od art,as fact , as metaphore, as poetry — there is is no one interpretation.
Our question to u is ”What is YOURS ,What is your opinion on street photography?
Eligibility : All photographers, worldwide
>Deadline : Jan 2008 >Extention for all (Slaapstadt)-Sleepcity folk
Entry Checklist : Up to 15 photographs ( image files in a zipped file; no slides please).
Please be sure to include title/caption information.
Contact MOPP via e-mail (
ghettogether@gmail.com) if you have any questions.
The fine print.
Send up to 15 original photographs (8×10 or smaller -
72pixelsPerInch jpegs files in a zipped file).
All processes and techniques are welcome.
Please include your name and the title of the image/s in each file name.
Please do not use quotes (“ “) when naming your image files.
If you wish to have your submittal returned to you,
please let us know,otherwise your
work will be filed on the MOPP blogspot and will remain candidates for future issues.All rights stay with the photographer.
As a way to promote the photographers presented in the MOPP,
and to encourage dialogue between contributors, street
addresses, e-mail addresses and website URL’s are typically printed.
If you wish to have any or all of this information
withheld, please indicate that to us. Likewise, photographs selected for
MOPP may also be presented on the MOPP blogspot.
If you do not wish to have your work shown on this site, please say so.
Although reasonable care will be exercised in the handling of photographs submitted
for review, MOPP is not held responsible for loss or any damage of submitted materials.
WE are researching to make a Catalogue of the MOPP Story
we are inviting any writers, and all the previous exhibtors to write a 500 word
essay. For possible* inclusion.please mail a plain text file,( Zip file)to Ghettogether@gmail.com
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